Things to know:

James Elkins Lectures at ETSU:
(text taken from Facebook event page)

Lecture #1: Monday, February 21, 2011, 7:00 p.m., 127 Ball Hall
“How to Use Your Eyes, and How Some Animals Use Their Eyes”
Exercises in seeing and the relevance of animal vision for understanding human vision.

James Elkins grew up in Ithaca, New York. He received the BA degree from Cornell (English and Art History). He received a graduate degree in painting, and then switched to Art History, got another graduate degree, and went on to do the PhD in Art History (all from the University of Chicago). He is currently E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

His writing focuses on the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. Some of his books are exclusively on fine art (What Painting Is, Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles?). Others include scientific and non-art images, writing systems, and archaeology (The Domain of Images, On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them), and some are about natural history (How to Use Your Eyes). Current projects include a series called the Stone Summer Theory Institutes, a book called The Project of Painting: 1900-2000, a series called Theories of Modernism and Postmodernism in the Visual Art, and a book written against Camera Lucida.

Sponsored by the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts and the Department of Art and Design.